Free Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler Page A

your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring too can be counted.”
    While Abraham’s offspring may be entitled to the entire area in thelong term, in the short term Abraham is confined to a narrow, almost uninhabitable patch between the central mountains and the Dead Sea. “That’s where we are now,” Avner said. While I was reading, he had molded a mound of sand into a strip, like a baguette. “These are the central mountains,” he said, pointing to the model. “These mountains were old, worn down over time. Then, about two million years ago”—he gestured toward a ravine he had dug alongside the mound—“the Rift Valley was created.” The rift, a giant scar across the face of the earth, extends from Lake Victoria in Central Africa, up through the Sinai and Jordan, all the way to the Euphrates. It reaches bottom at the Dead Sea, 1,300 feet below sea level, the “lowest spot on earth.”
    Once the rift appeared, the eastern side of the hills dropped off far more dramatically than the west, creating a geological oddity. When rain clouds from the Mediterranean reach this ridge, they suddenly get hit with a thick wall of air. The air is denser here because the Dead Sea is so low. The lower the ground, the more atmosphere there is. The more atmosphere, the more pressure in the air. One consequence of so much pressure is that it sucks the moisture out of the air. “It’s like if you press your lips against your sleeve and blow,” Avner said, “your sleeve becomes hot. That’s how this desert was created. It’s the private desert of the Dead Sea. I hate to say it, but it’s the smallest desert on earth.”
    “How many superlatives do you have?” I said.
    “Let’s see, Jericho is the lowest city on earth. The Sea of Galilee is the lowest freshwater lake on earth. The Dead Sea is the lowest—”
    “I get the idea.”
    “Do you?” he said, smiling. He gestured for me to follow.
    We got back in the car and made the steep descent to the Dead Sea, continuing to read. Suddenly at this point in the story, Genesis 14, Abraham gets drawn into a war, indicating, if nothing else, that he is growing in stature: A mere shepherd would not attack a large army. Four kings from Mesopotamia who have come to the Negev, possibly for the copper mines, terrorize the region. Eventually five kings from the city-states of Canaan, specifically the Jordan River region where Lot is living, engage them in battle. The Mesopotamian kings triumph, seizing thewealth of Sodom and Gomorrah, and taking Lot prisoner. When Abraham learns of his nephew’s plight, he pursues the kings, defeats them, and rescues Lot. “Your reward shall be very great,” God tells Abraham. How can that be, the octogenarian Abraham protests, “seeing that I shall die childless?” Fear not, God says, your offspring shall be as numerous as the stars.
    Sarah, seeing her husband’s frustration, follows Near Eastern custom from the time and offers him her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar, as a concubine. When Hagar gets pregnant, though, Sarah begins to treat her harshly and Hagar flees. An angel rescues Hagar, who then gives birth to a son, Ishmael. God reappears when Ishmael is thirteen and asks Abraham to follow another Near Eastern custom: circumcise himself and his son. This act is portrayed as a sign of the everlasting covenant between God and man, but for a God torn between acts of creation and destruction, it’s also a fitting emblem: forever branding a man’s source of creation with a mark of destruction.
    One day, when Abraham is sitting at the entrance of his tent, the Lord visits in the guise of three men. Abraham, who doesn’t know that the men represent God, follows bedouin tradition and orders that they be given food and water. “My lords, if it please you, do not go on past your servant. Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under a tree. And let me fetch a morsel